Moon Express Unveils Next Moon Lander 79
Velcroman1 writes "A U.S. spacecraft hasn't made a controlled landing on the moon since Apollo 17 left the lunar surface on Dec. 14, 1972. That's about to change. Moon Express will unveil the MX-1 spacecraft at the Autodesk University show in Las Vegas Thursday evening — a micro-spacecraft that will in 2015 mark the first U.S. 'soft' landing since the days of the Apollo program, FoxNews.com has learned. The craft looks for all the world like a pair of donuts wearing an ice cream cone, and the tiny vehicle clearly isn't big enough for a human being. But it is big enough to scoop up some rocks and dirt, store them in an internal compartment, and return it to Earth. After all, the moondirt Gene Cernan, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin once trod holds a king's ransom of titanium, platinum, and other rare elements. Moon Express plans to mine it."
Mooned (Score:3, Insightful)
Senator: "What good is electricity in the house?"
Engineer: "Senator, in 20 years, you'll be taxing it."
In time, governments will try to tax and control it, perhaps even stopping colonization or private enterprise, probably even cheered on by some around here who, one presumes, were completely down with Europe looting the New World to feed their governments' voracious appetites for cash, dead-set against any colonies not their own, much less independence.
Re:Define "kings ransom" first. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have the assays handy and I'm not an ores or metals guy anyway, but if the various metallic ores on the Moon are of a nature that they'd be easier to smelt and refine that'd be a plus. If mining and refining can be scaled up and use the freely-available solar energy, then the issue boils down to cost of return.
Using anything from hydrogen-oxygen to mass driver, return of bulk would only need an ablative shield against re-entry. Better might be doing other useful things as well - use the metals to build a tug for LEO, LEO to GEO, and trans-lunar chores, for starters. It really shouldn't take much - a wee bit of imagination (extrapolation, really), some cold hard energy and costs analysis....it's just rocket science with a bit of a twist on materials exploitation.
Yeah, the food thing. What got me was when a few years back when many retailers made their containers smaller to as to keep price rises less spectacular. The thought of all that re-tooling against turning a wheel on a sticker machine struck me as really messed up.